Parenting Resources, Child Development and More

By Julie Hellstrom Mexican Train Dominos is a great game that we've recently been introduced to, but we found the rules in the game we bought to be a little confusing. These are the Mexican Train Domino rules we learned to play that seems to best suit our younger kiddos. The dominos themselves are different than regular dominos because they go up to double 12's. One cool thing is that if counting dots is hard for your little ones, you can buy these dominos that have numbers instead of dots. The game go basically like this - each person takes a number of tiles ... Read Full Story

Parenting Allies - A Parenting Forum and Social Network site We were thinking it would be cool to have a social site similar to Facebook just for parents - then we found out a way to create your own social network, so we went ahead and did it! We decided to call it Parenting Allies , because in today’s world parenting is a tough job, and we need all the friends or allies we can get! So what is Parenting Allies? Parenting Allies is simply a place for you to go and share with other parents. There are many areas you can participate in, ... Read Full Story

Because I was a tomboy and have always felt comfortable around males (I had two male roommates during my last year of college), when I found out, five and a half years ago, that I was pregnant with a baby boy, I was very excited. I also looked forward to having my own father involved in his life, more so - I imagined - than he was during my childhood. Growing up with a sister always made me that much more interested and curious about males since they were a little foreign to me. I was jealous of my friends who had brothers, either ... Read Full Story

Failure To Thrive is a blockage in normal increases in height and weight that can lead to interruptions in the normal development and normal maturation. Failure To Thrive is a diagnosis given to babies who are consistently less than the normal weight for their age or who do not show weight gain for unclear reasons. There could be many causes. Many reasons for this involve social and environmental factors that work together to keep the infant from getting the nutrition the infant needs. Often, medical conditions prevent a infant from developing normally. Another important contributing factor is the child's own intolerances and sensitivities. If ... Read Full Story

Adding a child to a relationship definitely changes the dynamics of a partnership and will usually make things more stressful. People do it every day, though, so there's gotta be something said for creating families and making the beautiful babies that make the world go around. How do couples survive the tumultuous times ahead of them? What can they do to make things easier on their marriage and friendship? I work with couples all the time who speak of marital issues that stem from their disagreements on parenting and problems that didn't occur before children. There are several books I recommend to parents looking ... Read Full Story